Finally Won A Dang Box Pool.

The Outcome of the Game Becomes Secondary.

Seldom has there been a Super Bowl I dominated like this one. Picked the winner. Jordy Nelson. The over. How many ways was I going to bend this game over my knee? I added a little financial supplement to a quite Super Sunday with a little low stakes box pool victory. You may remember me lamenting last week about my lack of success in such pools, but this should give hope to all the mushes out there. The Steelers’ 2-point conversion in the 4th quarter, Green Bay’s last FG, it really all came together. The game itself was close without being overly dramatic? Or, did I not get properly invested? Compared to some of the close finishes of recent Super Bowls, this one felt less dire, but I’m sure for Packers fans the outcome was very satisfying. Some things…

If there is a player out there who doesn’t want a lockout a little more than all the others, it might be Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers catapulted himself into the stratosphere Sunday night with a performance that will make him the new heir apparent to the Manning/Brady debate. It was a month’s worth of great quarterback play for Rodgers who has only been Green Bay’s starter for 3 seasons. Considering the loss of Jerimichael Finley and their banged up running game, there is no reason to think the Packers will be slipping next season (that is if the boys decide to get a deal done). Rodgers is accurate, mobile and at times it looks like he engineers TD drives at will. He clearly outplayed Ben Roethlisberger on Sunday, and in his five career playoff games, his one loss came when his defense gave up half a hundred.

Speaking of Roethlisberger, it was a performance that sent him crashing down the historical ranks. It would have been painful to stomach, but had Roethlisberger won this Super Bowl, we would have started hearing things like, “Future Hall of Famer,” he would have been in the all-time QB discussion, and I just don’t think many fans are comfortable with that. And, let’s be honest, the guy has left a bad taste in the mouth of many fans. The Roethlisberger hate is still out there, and it’s still palpable. Big Ben wasn’t terrible like he was in his Super Bowl against Seattle, but he buried the Steelers with turnovers early, and couldn’t complete a comeback in the end. For now, Big Ben is safely back among the realm of very good, but not great quarterbacks.

It seems simple to boil down the game to just turnovers, but where else do you want to go to find the difference in this one? You could question the 52-yd field attempt for Suisham (his mom didn’t think that was going through), but aside from the turnovers the teams played a similar game. Mendenhall’s fumble derailed some effective running he had been doing in the game, and Big Ben’s pick-6 was a bit of a bad break, but the throw looked like it was going to be ill-advised at best. I think the Packers took advantage, didn’t make mistakes, and even if they might have let up a bit once they hit 28-17, they controlled the game from start to finish. At the end when they needed points, they scored. When they needed a stop, they got the stop.

Commercial Round-Up: It’s hard to keep the focus for the entire game these days. It’s a long day, and I have to say that there were probably some good commercials in the 2nd half that I might have missed out on. That said, I thought the creativity was a bit lacking. Don Draper would have been horrified. Not much was grabbing me early on. Doritos was showing a lot of heart, but mostly landing on creepy. In the end, some of the best I saw were…

The Chevy Truck Lassie theme. Nothing groundbreaking here, but mildly creative and identifiable. Also, this was the first decent commercial after a solid 1/2 hour of complete junk. My standards were incredibly low at this point.

I thought the Bridgestone “Reply All” ad was a good one. It’s something probably everyone has done, sent the accidental email. And, for Bridgestone to piggyback onto that theme for tires was unexpected. This was the first one all night where I chuckled.

I liked the one where Apple users were depicted as these drone type humans walking around in all white with their ear buds in. I thought that was some good backlash at Apple. They are so prominent now that they really can’t claim any counter-culture status. Also, I have no issue with Apple, but people who are obsessed with it are a little much.

I saw Roseanne getting bundled? That was probably funny.

My favorite commercial, though, was the monkey drivers for Career Builder. Monkeys are funny. Bad parking jobs in parking lots are a pet peeve of mine so I was nodding my head vigorously for this one. Their was some real good dialog from the guy trapped in his car. Of what I saw, it was easily my favorite.

So, that’s your NFL season. Hope everyone got their money’s worth. I can honestly say I am ready to move onto something else. I hope it comes back as scheduled this fall, but for now I am ready to put the Fox pregame crew to bed, and get Joe Buck juiced up for some baseball games.

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4 thoughts on “Finally Won A Dang Box Pool.”

I was dreading the big Ben legend status, had he won. Lets be honest, this is a guy who won a super bowl with a 22 qb rating and his 10-2 playoff record comes with an avg rating of 75. That’s Byron leftwich career territory.
Aaron Rodgers is impressive. I can’t remember a more accurate display by a qb- it is pretty remarkable. Don Beebe JR, jordy Nelson dropped 3 that went right through his hands. The packers are really young as well, they are going to be tough for years to come

oh, mini darth was my fav too, TIM, but funny – i was just about to flag to 3-Putt that his monkey thang was also airing last week. i was bored by it, already – ya know – with all my one hour of tv viewing per week.

but momma Q was kind of rolling over that one…so, i guess she agrees with 3-Putt’s humor.